by William King
The Everqueen did not seem to mind though. She seemed more intrigued than outraged, although that might simply have been good manners and self-control. Members of the Maiden Guard glared at him. They looked as if they would like to knock him to his knees with the butts of their spears. That was not something that you could do to a freeborn elf though. The Everqueen placed her hand on the arm of the captain of the guard to emphasise it, he thought.
A chamberlain leaned forward between them, stared coldly at Tyrion then made the formal introduction as politely as ritual demanded.
‘So you are the Prince Tyrion we have heard so much about,’ said the Everqueen. Her voice was low and pleasant but it irritated Tyrion, as did her condescending manner.
‘I am afraid I do not know what you have heard about me, your serenity,’ he said.
‘I confess I was expecting someone a little more polished,’ she said with a trace of acid in her voice.
‘I am sorry to disappoint,’ he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Prince Perian smirking and he realised that he was not doing his own chances of becoming champion any good here and that was giving his rivals cause for amusement.
He liked that even less. He was getting off to a bad start. Perhaps he was sabotaging his own chances of winning because he did not want the prize.
Already the Everqueen was moving along the line, and he noticed that Prince Perian was following through the ritual with polished aplomb. He noticed also that the captain of the Everqueen’s guard was staring at him coldly as if memorising his face.
He suspected that he had made an enemy there by his disrespect for her mistress. He smiled cheerfully at her in a way that he could not have managed with Alarielle and which was, as he knew, very provoking under the circumstances. The captain turned her head away quickly as if to hide her anger, but he saw that there was a red flush on her cheeks.
Very good, Tyrion thought to himself, very suave. He did not think he could have done worse in this situation if he had tried. In fact, he suspected that he would probably have done better. He told himself that he did not care, that he did not want to be part of this herd of worshippers, that he was quite happy that he was immune to whatever magic surrounded the Everqueen. He suspected however that he was not really immune, but rather it simply affected him differently.
Some of his fellow candidates looked as if they wanted to challenge him to a duel there and then. Some of them looked satisfied that a potential rival had eliminated himself from the competition so early, and some of them simply looked confused as if they could not understand his behaviour. They looked at him pityingly and that made him even angrier.
Tyrion knew that he needed to get a grip on himself. If he was going to be eliminated from this competition he wanted it to be because he was beaten by his opponents, not because he had beaten himself.
He resolved himself to do better. If he was going to lose here, he was going to lose openly and fairly after he had done his best. There were still tournaments to be entered and fights to be won and he had no intention of losing any of those, even if he could win nothing else. This was his chance to prove that he was among the best warriors in elvendom, if not the best.
Tomorrow he would find out.
Chapter Eighteen
N’Kari could tell the druchii troops were nervous. He could tell they hated him. He rather enjoyed the sensation. He wore a form appropriate for the situation, an armoured female parody of Malekith, which amused and served him in multiple ways.
It mocked the Witch King while at the same time reminding his followers from whom ultimate authority flowed. It pained N’Kari to admit that he needed that. The spells binding him prevented him from bringing his full powers to bear. Without Malekith’s permission, he could not unleash them.
Fortunately, the dark elves were in the habit of obeying their king. Malekith had ensured that it could not be otherwise, at least when his eye or the eye of his direct representative was on them.
A delicious aroma of fear rose from the assembled soldiery and their leaders. None of them wished to invite, or even give the excuse for, punitive action. There were many ways that could be turned to amusing advantage N’Kari thought. If he wished.
At the moment, he did not really want to. Malekith had calculated things very finely. N’Kari did not want to interfere with his plans to ravage Ulthuan. He wanted very badly to see that happen and he had made up his mind to do everything in his power to help in this one area.
He wanted to kill high elves and the best way of doing that was to see that their savage kindred were in a position to do as much damage as possible. That was why he had spent the past few days in the ultimately tedious business of shipping the Witch King’s troops to various points around Ulthuan.
He paused for a moment, wondering where this sudden complacency had come from. He examined the nature of the spells binding him for what felt like the millionth time. There was indeed an element of subtle compulsion woven into them, guiding his thoughts into these paths. That increased his anger but even that was channelled. He laughed and allowed himself to enjoy the mind-altering sensation. All that was happening here was that certain aspects of his mood and personality were being amplified. It was strangely enjoyable, a thing which was also a component of the spell.
In his deepest secret heart, N’Kari understood the insult and resented it. One locked-off chamber of his mind plotted vengeance and began to muster its resources. Other chambers of his mind entered into the spirit of things and plotted how it could aid in this new Rape of Ulthuan. He gave his attention back to the dark elves.
He let his stern gaze rest on every watching druchii in turn. They kept their faces impassive but inwardly they quailed under the gaze of one who so resembled their much-feared leader and at the same time was rumoured to be a daemon straight from hell.
All of them, except perhaps General Dorian, were wondering exactly why they were here and exactly what was going to happen. Being what and who they were, they must be half-expecting a trap. They must be asking themselves whether Malekith had resolved to dispose of them in some new and horrific way. They were the last of the original force that had landed in Ulthuan. All of the rest of the soldiers had been deployed near their objectives. They were the only ones who had been issued with special amulets. Most of them had no idea of the purpose of those charms save perhaps the sorceresses and their commander.
Being who they were, all of them in their secret hearts knew they were guilty of some treason and N’Kari gave them time to dwell on their own particular variations on that theme. Once the fear and anticipation had reached a crescendo, he opened the portal in the flashiest and most terrifying way he could. The basic composition of the gateway was unchangeable but he could use his magic to add little touches of his own to the spell.
The air chilled, thunder rumbled and the stink of ozone drifted into every nostril as the gateway appeared illuminated by crackling lightning. The area within shimmered with multi-coloured light. There was no way they could see through it and know their ultimate destination. They could be going across Ulthuan as they were told, or to the deepest hell. They would not know until they passed through and their well-controlled terror was delicious.
General Dorian gave the order to move. In lockstep, the first of the units began to march through the gateway he had opened in the fabric of reality. Even N’Kari had to admit that their discipline was impressive.
Dorian studied his bodyguard as they marched with him into the portal. They were the elite of his force, a fine selection of druchii heavy infantry, disciplined and capable. They would stand and fight while others died or fled because they were proud of themselves, their heritage and their bloodlines. It was this pride that made them the finest heavy infantry in the world. It was what allowed them to march through the gateway under the daemon’s terrifying gaze without any apparent show of fear.
; He understood them because he was like them. From birth, he had been brought up to see himself as one of the born rulers of the world. He had trained alongside his brothers for hours with sword and spear and shield and crossbow. He had learned to fight and to compete. His brothers had been both comrades and rivals. He wanted to outshine them and he had, with the possible exception of Urian, but that very rivalry had provided him with the motivation to excel. The same thing applied through the entire vast army on a very different scale.
Each soldier attempted to outshine every other soldier in his company. Every company tried to surpass every other company in the regiment. Every regiment tried to outclass every other in the army. And the army must prove itself against every foe.
Glory was both personal and communal. The Witch King looked down on all and distributed his rewards. He was feared and hated, but his favour was sought out as the ultimate source of power. It was not a pleasant system, Dorian thought, but it worked. And it worked because at the end of the day Malekith was fair.
He was proof of that. He had started off as a common soldier, or as common as any soldier ever was in his elite unit. His family had provided him with his weapons and his basic training. He had learned the hard craft of raiding and slaving along the coasts of the Old World for himself.
He had earned his rewards and the respect of his warriors. When the warhorns summoned the dark elves to battle against the hordes of Chaos, his retinue had proven themselves against the tattooed marauders with whose distant descendants they were currently allied. He had distinguished himself in raids on the slann lands of Lustria, and acquired much gold as part of the plunder.
On the greater battlefields he had come under the eye of Malekith himself and by a combination of ferocity, fearlessness and fighting skill he had attracted the Witch King’s attention. He had risen eventually to become an honoured general in the armies of Naggaroth, being rewarded with the lands of fallen rivals, building his wealth on his share of the plunder.
Yes, Dorian thought, he had done well under the Witch King. But he was not sure about this invasion at all. Oh, there was nothing wrong with seeking to reclaim the lost lands of Ulthuan. The spoils would be immense, ancient estates would be restituted, new ones earned. Many slaves would be taken and the most hated enemies of the druchii would be humbled. He had no problem with any of this. In truth, he looked forward to it.
It was not that he resented the vast use of magic instead of force of arms either. Sorcery was an integral part of the way the dark elves fought their wars, part of the strength of their nation, one of those things that made them superior to all other races. He appreciated both the tactical and strategic uses of wizardry and he knew that both Malekith and his divine mother were masters of it.
It was this business of relying on Malekith’s bound daemon and travelling through the mystical gates it summoned that troubled him. There was something about these pathways that made his elven senses scream at the peril. He sensed the presence of daemonic things very close by.
What if something went wrong?
He glanced across at Cassandra. His sorceress lover looked calm, but he knew her well enough to spot the small signs of nervousness: the way she kept toying with the rune-inscribed ring on her left hand, for example. She claimed they were passing through the realms of Chaos when they went through these portals and, if that was the case, terrifying, ancient horrors were close, separated from them by a barrier thinner than the skin of a bubble. Even more than their lives, their souls were at risk.
And that was not the only disturbing thing about this business. Cassandra had whispered other things in his ear at night as they lay in their sleeping silks, spent from their wild lovemaking.
She claimed that the Witch King’s new pet was a creature whose strength might conceivably be greater than Malekith’s and which might break free at any moment. Of course, Cassandra was Morathi’s creature, and he suspected that at this moment the Hag Queen was not best pleased with her son, but that did not mean she was wrong. If N’Kari truly was what Malekith claimed, it was one of the greatest enemies of his people in history, if not the greatest.
It made him fear that after all these long millennia, the Witch King’s sanity had finally cracked, that this expedition might be doomed by that alone. Worse was the thought that such a powerful, malign and barely controllable being was the one opening these gates and leading them through these hellish realms. The possibilities for disaster were enormous. The lives of all his troops were in the hands of a creature that could and would, if given the opportunity, snuff them out on a whim.
But what could he do? Rebellion against the Witch King was near unthinkable at the best of times, and this was a time of war, when any disaffection in the army could be disastrous. And there were other things to be considered.
Malekith had bound the daemon. It was serving them, and the strategic advantages of being able to move huge forces across Ulthuan so swiftly and unknown by their enemy were enormous. The task he had been set was proof of this.
It was a gigantic risk but it could so easily pay off, and if it did… This would be a victory still talked about in ten thousand years. The spoils that would go to the victors would be fantastic.
Dorian knew too that this was a campaign that had been centuries in the planning. The Witch King must know what he was doing. Their foes would be taken utterly and completely off guard and in a war like this, the advantage of surprise would be worth legions of warriors.
For the moment then, Dorian was determined to follow, but if things went wrong, then it would be time to consider the possibility of a new ruler of Naggaroth and exactly how that might be arranged.
N’Kari looked around. His magical senses told him that they were in Avelorn. Not much had changed in these forests since he had rampaged across Ulthuan all those millennia ago. It would have given him as much pleasure as ever to watch them burn, but he could not make it happen. He was constrained by this accursed chain and the Witch King’s spells not to invoke his power, even in self-defence. If he were attacked now, he would have to rely on the natural resilience of his daemonic incarnation to save him, nothing else would.
The winds of magic brought something else to his spiritual senses than the scent of the forest’s old magic. He could tell that somewhere relatively close at hand were at least two descendants of Aenarion. Their psychic stench was quite unmistakable. One of them was even familiar, although it had been over a century since N’Kari had last smelled it.
It belonged to Tyrion who had helped in his ignominious undoing at the Shrine of Asuryan. Just the faintest hint of that spiritual aroma set N’Kari to flexing his hands like claws. He salivated at the thought of tearing that particular prey apart. This time he would not toy with his victim until after he was certain it could not escape doom.
Of course, right now there was nothing he could do. He was constrained to pass back through the portal he had opened and return to Malekith’s side. He would need to do something to ensure that this situation did not last indefinitely.
His thirst for revenge on the whole line of Aenarion burned stronger than ever.
As soon as N’Kari vanished, a weight lifted from Dorian’s shoulders even though the portal remained where the daemon had opened it, glowing in the air. He took a deep sniff of the pine-scented air. It was fresh and pure and smelled of living things. It was quite unlike the chill air of Naggaroth and yet there was something about its purity that reminded him of his homeland. He looked around and he could not help but smile.
It was said that long ago the first elves had been born in the forests during the long golden reign of the first Everqueen. It was still thought by many that the forests were the true home of his people and at this moment he could believe it.
This was indeed a magical place. He could feel it in the air. Powerful sorcery surrounded him. For a moment that made him fearful, but only for a moment. This
was not the sort of magic that was intended to harm. It was the magic of growing things, of life, of this most ancient forest. Potent though it was, it had nothing to do with warfare or death or killing.
He looked around at his warriors and could see that their faces were similarly transformed. Just for a moment they had all returned to childhood. There was something about this place that would do that to even the most cynical dark elf. Druchii who hated each other and been rivals for decades exchanged smiles and then looked away from each other as if embarrassed, not quite understanding what was happening to them.
Perhaps he was wrong, Dorian thought. Perhaps this place did have the means to protect itself. Perhaps they were coming under its influence right now. If that was the case, he would soon put a stop to it. He bellowed instructions to his soldiers, telling them to form up in ranks, to set up a defensive perimeter, to be ready to protect themselves from any high elf who might stumble upon them.
Dorian looked at Cassandra. He could see from her look that she understood what had happened here. She understood how close they were to victory. They had established a beachhead in the most sacred heart of elvendom. They could use the daemon’s portal to bring in an army and seize this land and its ruler.
Already scouts were fanning out from the point of arrival. If they encountered any rangers in the woods, they would capture or kill them. It would not do for word of their arrival to leak out before they were ready and the full force of the dark elf army had arrived.
No matter, Dorian thought. He knew that they were going to be blessed with success. The most difficult part had been achieved. He was walking were no druchii had walked in a thousand years and he knew that they were within striking distance of the Everqueen herself, if she was at the tournament ground as Malekith predicted she would be.